NTHS School Counseling Blog

This is the time of year when plenty of super-achieving high school seniors are agonizing about their college choices.

Their parents are just as frazzled as they are.

What stresses these families is choosing between an expensive brand-name university (often on the East Coast) or a relatively affordable public university.

I’ve been getting emails from parents who are facing these very choices. Here are snapshots of their dilemmas:

The daughter of one mother was accepted into the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and North Carolina State University, but what got the teenager excited was a coveted acceptance from New York University.

The mom shared this in her email:

She is determined to go to NYU because she thinks it's the best school and will give her all the contacts after college. She's paying for it so she thinks she can do whatever she wants, but she will have a $200K debt when she graduates in four years. Her dad and I think this is a huge mistake but she won't listen to us.

Also weighing in was a father from Southern California whose son, who is interested in sports management, got into Indiana University, University of Massachusetts and the University of Minnesota. While the dad considered it a long shot, his son applied to New York University and was accepted.

The dad works in a boom-and-bust business, real estate development, and while he has the money to pay for an NYU degree that he figures will cost $300,000, he wouldn’t be able to afford such an extravagant education for his youngest son who is just one year younger.

And then there is the mom in New Mexico whose daughter, a National Merit finalist, got into George Washington University, which was her dream college because of its location in Washington, DC, and it’s opportunities for internships. She received a $20,000 yearly merit scholarship from GWU. Her biggest scholarship haul, however, came from the University of Mississippi where she got into the honors program and received a full ride plus a yearly stipend.

I’ll reveal shortly where each students is heading off in the fall, but first here’s a brief backgrounder about college pricing......................

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This blog is meant to share information, resources and tools. Some are original works by staff at NTHS and others are republications of useful posts. These republications, the authors and any comments do not represent North Tahoe High School, it's staff or TTUSD (or it's opinions/beliefs).